The contact center surveying and analytics market is projected to reach a record high over the next three years, with growth rates of 10 percent, 15 percent, and 14 percent, respectively, according to a new report from DMG Consulting. Currently, contact center surveying has a penetration rate of 3.15 percent, with 1,941 contact centers implementing formal survey offerings as of May 2007, the study finds.
The 200-page "Contact Center Surveying and Analytics Report" analyzes various aspects of contact center surveying, including ROI, pricing, available technology and functionality, as well as how the surveys can be delivered. More important, it addresses best practices as well as common mistakes and challenges.
Donna Fluss, president of DMG Consulting and author of the report, says that "surveying is the only way to determine if your customers are satisfied." Companies have been doing surveys for years, Fluss says, but the problem has been that "they haven't had an easy way of identifying, correcting, analyzing, and applying the results." She also notes, "It is worse to survey and not apply results, than not to survey."
Traditionally, the most common form of determining customer satisfaction has been through quality assurance (QA). However, companies have found that QA oversight is not the most effective means of gauging customer satisfaction. "Demand for surveying is growing as companies begin to appreciate the strong correlation between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty," Fluss says. The report concludes that companies have also apparently decided that they want to hear "the voice of the customer"; understand his or her experience with the company; and that it's critical to have real-time feedback between the customer and individual agents.
The growth in the adoption rate of contact center surveying, the report suggests, is due to the fact that companies have finally put surveying on their to-do lists. Second, there's a new breed of survey technology enabling companies to better tackle the issue. "As companies spend more money, vendors are able to invest more in their products," Fluss notes. Surveying and analytics applications have continued to improve in functional capability, and, as a result, the applications have become, as Fluss says, "more actionable"--that is, they provide enterprises tools and information they can actually use.

Fluss says the report shows that, with effective surveying applications and best practices, companies are likely to see both qualitative and quantitative benefits: they will better capture and quantify customer satisfaction, obtain better customer input to drive company changes, keep executives tuned into what's happening, and can expect to see a return on their investment within a year. That, she says, is why "we want to get this [report] to as many people's hands as possible."
Related articles: Analytics Is the Answer Call Center Strategies Ride the Bench Interactive Intelligence Calls on Hosted Services